Rising Voices

The women of Nari Jibon traveled a long way to overcome shyness, opening themselves up, build their confidence and were trained to tell their stories to the world via blogging. With much effort and support from the educators and a little help from the friends of Nari Jibon the students are now publishing stories, poems photos etc. in their own blogs.

When asked “how can we help” by an audience member at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest, Hungary, Mialy Andriamananjara of the FOKO Madagascar project said it was skills not money that her project needed the most. By using social networking travel sites like Dopplr, we can help introduce highly skilled travelers to Rising Voices outreach projects. Groups like Nari Jibon in Dhaka, Bangladesh have already discovered the magic of making it work.

On the first anniversary of the Nari Jibon Blog we have asked the people behind Nari Jibon of Bangladesh, its educators and a participant about the challenges of the citizen media outreach project so far. We wanted to know what they have learned, how the blog has helped them, what the frustrations have been and what were their happiest moments. Read all about these in this week’s feature.

Five representatives from Rising Voices will present their experiences - either as trainers or trainees - in citizen media outreach projects in Colombia, Bolivia, Madagascar, and Kenya at this year’s Global Voices Summit on June 28 in Budapest, Hungary.

Nari Jibon’s team of bloggers take us on a tour of Dhaka’s slums, describing how it is that Bangladeshis live in some of the very poorest parts of the capital city. Because the sub-titles pass by so quickly, I will transcribe them here.

One of the most exciting developments from last week’s batch of posts is that many Rising Voices participants are using their blogs as more than just spaces of communication. They have realized that by tapping into the support of a community, they are able to start campaigns to help their neighbors in need.

Taslima Akter, Sherin Sultana, and fellow bloggers from the Nari Jibon project take us on a tour of Dhaka University during celebrations for the first day of spring.

The participants of the Nari Jibon project of Bangladesh continued to portray their culture, lifestyle and unique things to the world with citizen media tools. They celebrated the Bangla new year by participating in a cultural program. Watch the photos and videos and experience Bangladesh.

For this week’s Rising Voices podcast we listen in on a live interview with Nari Jibon founder Kathryn Ward from WBDX’s Big Muddy radio program in Carbondale, Illinois. Kathy describes how Nari Jibon got its start and how they’ve been incorporating blogging and citizen media into their English and computer training classes to give women in Dhaka, Bangladesh a stronger voice and community online.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Rising Voices grantee and Nari Jibon founder, Kathryn Ward, came up with the idea of a friendly poetry competition among Rising Voices bloggers. Participants of the ten citizen media outreach projects were given a week to write and submit their poems related to the theme “women hold up half the sky.”